Group wants level employment playing field

Group wants level employment playing field

By Jasminee Sahoye

The local chapter of an organisation that represents Africans around the world wants to see a better and more comprehensive employment equity legislation in Ontario.

The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) is calling on the three major political parties to support a comprehensive employment equity legislation so as to create a level employment playing field for racialized workers.

It says racialized workers are not experiencing the glass ceiling. “We are faced with the concrete ceiling or steel door.”.......(click the title above to go to the source article).

HARVARD GROUP PUBLISHES WHITE PAPER REVIEWING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES PERPETRATED BY THE UNITED NATIONS STABILIZATION MISSION IN HAITI, CALLING FOR MINUSTAH WITHDRAWAL

On October 4^th, 2011, Harvard students as part of a group of Canadian and US human rights advocates, doctors, public health experts, and journalists released an extensively researched white paper reviewing and evaluating the record of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (known by its French acronym, MINUSTAH) and recommending the withdrawal of the force from Haiti. The white paper release comes at a time of heightened scrutiny of MINUSTAH due to high profile human rights abuses and widespread anti-MINUSTAH sentiment in Haiti. The United Nations Security Council’s meeting to renew MINUSTAH’s mandate for the next year is scheduled for October 15^th, 2011.

The white paper describes the historical and legal underpinnings of MINUSTAH’s mandate and its political context, while thoroughly reviewing its human rights record since the 2010 earthquake. Human rights violations perpetrated by the force include sexual violence, violent responses to political protests, and the introduction of cholera into Haiti followed by the failure to accept responsibility or offer adequate resources for cholera treatment, prevention, and compensation to victims’ families. Beyond these direct abuses, MINUSTAH has also violated its mandate through failure to protect the internally displaced from forced evictions and gender-based violence, poor security coordination and lack of communication with Haitian groups, and subversion of democratic processes by failing to respond to significant irregularities during the recent presidential elections.

Co-author Deepa Panchang noted, “The white paper project emerged because our Haitian partners were angry and frustrated with MINUSTAH’s widespread human rights violations in Haiti, yet these violations were not being documented in a systematic way and MINUSTAH was not being held accountable for them. Our goal for the white paper was to present an accessible and accurate report to influence decision-making going forward.” Panchang is an alumna of the Harvard School of Public Health.

“The cholera epidemic has been an entirely manmade and preventable disaster for Haiti. Especially given the role of MINUSTAH in bringing this epidemic to Haiti, the significant allocation of funding to MINUSTAH while the cholera response remains underfunded is problematic to say the least,” co-author Rishi Rattan of Physicians for Haiti added.

With this in mind, the white paper seeks to shed light on the current human rights abuses occurring at the hands of MINUSTAH and spark critical debate about whether the international community can continue to justify the increasingly high human cost of the mission.

“With the continuous stream of human rights violations attributed to MINUSTAH, if the international community is serious about helping Haiti they will decide that respect for Haitian sovereignty and human rights is incompatible with an extension of the force’s mandate,” said co-author Kevin Edmonds, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto.

Block building of monument to slaver John Newton

The following letter was written by Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya, who resides in Toronto Canada. It is posted here with his permission and in support of the cause Ajamu and the Network for Pan-African Solidarity are advocating for:

October 4, 2011

Prime Minister Hon. Dr. Denzil L. Douglas

Government Headquarters

Church Street, Basseterre

St. Kitts

Re: Block building of monument to slaver John Newton


Dear Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas,

I write you with grave concern about the plan by private agents in St. Kitts and Nevis to construct a monument to John Newton, a man who traded in the bodies of Afrikan people and was, therefore, an enabler of the Enslavement of our people in the Caribbean. This proposed initiative, which is slated to be built at the Lighthouse Baptist Church in Sandy Point, would be an attack on the psyche and dignity of the Afrikan majority in your country.

The effects of the historical trauma from the Enslavement are still with the Afrikan population of St. Kitts and Nevis as well as with those of the other Caribbean islands. The construction of a monument to the memory of a slaver who later became a part of of the abolitionist movement should not even be recorded as a footnote in the history of the people of St. Kitts and Nevis. It is the acts of resistance to the Enslavement by the enslaved Afrikans in your country and other territories of the Caribbean that should be celebrated and memorialized in the landscape and minds of the people. 

Toussaint L'ouverture of Haiti and Sam Sharpe of Jamaica did more to advance the cause of liberty for enslaved Afrikans than that of White abolitionists. Many of of the White abolitionists still wanted Afrikans to remain on the plantations with labour relations which were merely slight improvement of that obtained under chattel slavery. It was the covert and overt acts of resistance by the enslaved Afrikans that led to their freedom.

By honouring John Newton, the agents who are promoting this scheme are unwittingly and subtly suggesting to the Afrikans in St. Kitts and Nevis that a significant act such as their ancestors' emancipation from the Enslavement must be attributed to the work of "enlightened" White abolitionists. White supremacy, in its ideological manifestation, has already domesticated the minds of many of our people with the idea that they are insignificant moral beings, existentially-speaking.

According to this racist ideology, it is Europeans, our intellectual superiors, who are responsible for important and noteworthy economic, social, scientific and political developments within the human family. Therefore, a monument to this peripheral person is a confirmation and perpetuation of the notion that whiteness is responsible for any forward developments made by Afrikans in St. Kitts and Nevis as well as elsewhere in the Americas. St. Kitts and Nevis ought not to be the stage on which "Prospero" and his promoters play out the drama of their civilizing mission on supposedly hapless, island-dwelling "Caliban" and his relatives. Not in our backyard!

Prime Minister Douglas, I am calling upon you to use all available means at your disposal to stop this project. We are counting on you you to do the right thing.

Sincerely,


Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

MINUSTAH preying on Haitians, UN’s occupation force must go now!

TO: Media Outlets and Personnel

The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) is sharing its press release on the behaviour of the the United Nations' occupation force or MINUSTAH against the people of Haiti. The press release is attached and well as below this message.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 9, 2011

MINUSTAH preying on Haitians, UN’s occupation force must go now!

 Toronto, ON -- The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) stands in solidarity with the Committee for the Research, Development and Organization of Port-Salut’s (CREDOP) denunciation of the United Nations-flagged occupation army’s behaviour. CREDOP described such behaviour as "contemptuous, insulting, disrespectful and dishonest to the citizens and environment of Port-Salut."

 The recent gang-rape allegation of a teenager by members of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) is one more case in a litany of physical and sexual abuses that have been experienced by Haitians at the hands of this 12,252-strong occupation force. It is high time for the United Nations’ occupation army to leave Haiti.

 The United Nations’ military personnel have a history of committing rape and sexual abuse of Haitian children and adults. In 2007, the UN deported 108 Sri Lanka soldiers, because of their sexual abuse of minors.

 The military presence of the United Nations in Haiti is quite abnormal. This international body is usually called upon to enforce a peace agreement or to stand between warring parties to a conflict. Haiti does not fit the mould of prior UN interventions. Why is Haiti being singled out for this “special” treatment? In whose interest is it to have Haitians live under the surveillance and iron fist of a foreign occupation force?

 According to the Washington DC-based Center for Economic Policy Research, the UN’s occupation force has “developed a reputation for brutality and human right violations. These include a raid on one of Haiti’s largest poor neighborhoods in July 2005 that left dozens of civilians killed or wounded.”

The United Nations’ occupation army has been linked to the strain of cholera that has killed over 6,000 Haitians and infected over 400,000 individuals. The medical calamity has placed tremendous strain on the already compromised health care infrastructure in the country.

 The medical aid group Doctors Without Borders documented 10,000 new cholera cases in the lower Aribonite Valley over a period of ten weeks during the summer. The United Nations should commit the resources to fix the problem caused by its armed personnel.

 The Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) is calling upon the United Nations to immediately withdraw its occupation force from Haiti and to provide reparations to the people and the country for the harm that it has done to Haitians.

-30-

Network for Pan-Afrikan Solidarity (Toronto) For further information please contact: Email: network4panafrikansolidarity@gmail.com